The present invention relates generally to managing multi-media communications, and more particularly to a modular system for managing a subscribers messaging content from a plurality of messaging service sources.
In today""s office environment, it is common for a person to rely on a combination of communication devices for their multi-media communication needs. For example, a person may utilize a desk top telephone, a voice mail system, a mobile telephone, a cellular telephone, a fax machine, a wireless pager, and a building wide or campus wide loud speaker paging system (either overhead loud speakers or through the loud speaker in each desk top telephone), and an e-mail system.
Each of the above listed systems is tailored to provide a convenient system for providing certain types of communications but is unsuited for other types of communications. For example, the e-mail system and the fax machine are convenient for written communication but are unsuited for a real time voice conversation.
The desk top telephone is well suited for providing a high quality of service voice conversation but is unsuited for providing voice conversation when the user is not at their desk. On the other hand, a mobile telephone or cellular telephone is well suited for providing voice conversation to a mobile user, but the quality of service is typically not as high as the quality of service of the desk top telephone.
When a subscriber receives an incoming call on the desk top telephone and the subscriber does not answer the desk top telephone, the caller may leave a message on a voice mail system associated with the desk top telephone service provider voice mail system.
If the subscriber receives an incoming call on the mobile telephone, (even if the subscriber is located at the desk top telephone) the subscriber is required to answer the call using the mobile telephone. If the subscriber does not answer the mobile telephone, the caller may leave a message on a mobile telephone voice mail system for the subscriber to retrieve at a later time.
A similar situation occurs with a subscriber""s email. If a subscriber chooses to access his or her Internet Mail account from both a wireless personal data assistant (either a PDA operating in a wide area data network or a PDA embodied in a cellular or PCS telephone) there exist few systems to assure that email messages are available to the subscriber on both devices.
Internet Mail clients can be configured to either remove email from an Internet Mail server after downloading the email to a local folder or to leave the email on the Internet Mail Server after downloading. If either device is configured to remove messages, the other device may not receive a removed message. If neither device removes messages, the Internet Mail server capacity will soon be reached. To assure message content is available on both devices, the operator must occasionally synchronize the email files of the two devices.
Private mail server systems such a MicroSoft Exchange(copyright) and Lotus Notes(copyright) may provide a single email file that enables subscriber access from multiple devices. However, access from a wide area wireless device is complicated by the fact that normal Internet mail protocols are not used and a customized virtual private network connections over the wide area network may be necessary to properly secure the private mail server and, the size of the data files that need to be transferred between the private mail server and the wireless device at login may be greater than required by an Internet Mail server system.
What is needed is a multi-media communication management system for managing a subscribers messaging content from a plurality of messaging service sources that does not suffer the disadvantages of the known systems.
A first aspect of the present invention is to provide a multi-media communication management system for operation with a subscriber station that includes an interface for coupling to a subscriber device. The subscriber device is capable of receiving subscriber emails over a wide area network communication link to an email server. The multi-media communication management system comprises a network communication circuit for communication with the subscriber station and a service provider network interface for communication with a service provider multi-media communications network.
A subscriber device email interface establishes communications with the subscriber station at which a subscriber device is coupled and receives subscriber emails provided to the subscriber device over the wide area network communication link.
A subscriber email client comprises both: a) means for establishing communications with a remote email server coupled to the service provider network and receiving subscriber emails directed to the remote email server; and b) means generating inbox content comprising subscriber emails provided to the subscriber device and subscriber emails directed to the remote email server.
The system may further comprises an email storage file in which the inbox content may be stored by the system and means for providing the inbox content to the subscriber station for display on a display associated with the subscriber station. The inbox content may be provided as an HTML document that includes the content in a layout format selected from one of a plurality of layout formats suitable for display or may be provided in association with a style sheet selected from one of a plurality of style sheets suitable for display. The display may be the display of the subscriber device and the system may provide instructions to the subscriber station to display the content on the subscriber device.
For a better understanding of the present invention, together with other and further aspects thereof, reference is made to the following description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, and its scope will be pointed out in the appended clams.